The present disclosure generally relates to an automatic vehicle door movement control system, and more particularly relates to an automatic vehicle door movement control system which selectively utilizes an input mask.
Vehicles having large passenger and cargo spaces, such as sports utility vehicles and vans, may selectively enclose and provide access to passenger and cargo spaces using large doors. For example, sports utility vehicles and vans may employ a rear tailgate door hingedly attached to a vehicle body adjacent to a rear tailgate opening to selectively allow access to a rear cargo area. Vans may also employ one or more sliding side doors for selectively opening and closing an ingress/egress passage defined in one or both sides of the van to selectively allow access to the passenger area. As the openings enclosed by the tailgate and sliding side door(s) may be larger than those enclosed by conventional swinging vehicle doors, these doors may be larger than their counterpart swinging doors, and as such may also be heavier and more cumbersome to operate. This may especially be so for smaller and/or weaker users.
To facilitate operation, the associated vehicle may be provided with a system for automatically opening and closing the large vehicle doors (as well as smaller swinging vehicle doors). Such a system may be an electronically actuated system which automatically opens and closes the vehicle doors upon receipt of an instructing signal. In operation, these systems may receive an instructing signal, such as an open signal or a close signal, and operate to move the door in accordance with the instructing signal.
Though an improvement over conventional, manually operated large vehicle doors, the automatic door opening/closing systems may present new problems associated with the operation thereof. One such problem that may be encountered occurs when more than one instructing signal is simultaneously or near-simultaneously received by the control system. When more than one instructing signal is received in short-order, the system may become overloaded, and accordingly may not control movement of the large vehicle door(s) in accordance with the user's intended instructions.